


A Rock And A Hard Place

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Broken Bones, Caring Winchesters (Supernatural), Castiel (Supernatural) Whump, Castiel in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Emergency Medical Care, Gen, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Hurt/Comfort, Winchester First Aid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-27 05:45:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18190535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: When the bunker’s warding goes haywire, and turns on Castiel, the angel ends up hurt.The nearest medical care is hours away, but Dean knows what to do.It doesn’t mean any of them are going to like it.





	A Rock And A Hard Place

**Author's Note:**

> So this is probably what you absolutely shouldn’t do even if you are treating an angel with temporary Grace problems, when the nearest hospital is hours away and none of you really trust anybody else to look after him anyway.

“On three,” Dean said, and this time it _was_ three. He counted, and then they pushed together, and the stone slab shifted but only by a couple of inches.

But now they had it, they couldn’t let go; not with Cas still trapped beneath it; the problem was it was too heavy to hold there for long.

And then Dean saw Cas move, his arms coming up to brace against the underside of the slab, and he barked at the angel to stop.

Even though he knew it was the only way. He and Sam couldn’t hold the slab, let alone lift it free of the angel. Cas might be hurt, but he was also the only other one who could actually help here.

It didn’t make it any easier to hear his yelp of pain as he brought his strength to bear, letting the brothers concentrate on moving the heavy weight to the side and away before dropping it to the floor.

Cas’s arms collapsed back down, and he yelled at the agony that sudden movement caused; one hand went to cup his side, but Dean and Sam dropped to kneel beside him, and kept him still.

“Easy, easy, angel,” Dean said.

Sam took hold of the arm on Cas’s injured side, and carefully lowered it back down. “We just gotta check, Cas, but you probably have broken ribs.”

Cas did his best not to move, but Dean could see how much pain he was in, in the way he trembled, the grey pallor of his skin, and how he dug his teeth into his bottom lip as Sam gingerly felt his way along the angel’s side.

He glanced at Dean, and nodded.

Great.

“Okay,” Dean said, trying to get his voice level, and in control, because they both knew what was coming next and Cas needed to be able to have confidence in them. “Gonna have to move you to the infirmary, Cas. Just let us do the work, okay?”

++

Cas hated the medical wing of the bunker. It reminded him too much of the chair Metatron had strapped him into before slitting his throat and stealing his Grace.

It reminded him of other things, too; like when the brothers or Mary or Jack had been hurt, and sequestered there on one of the beds until Cas could heal them or if for any reason he couldn’t, remained there until their natural healing ability allowed them to recover.

That room, for Cas, would have been the stuff of nightmares had he been able to sleep, but it haunted him nonetheless.

He had been an occasional guest there, and now it was his turn again, it seemed.

Once he was settled, Dean left Sam to watch over him and disappeared to try and fix the wards. While they didn’t know exactly what had happened, it had to be related to the archive where they’d been working.

Everything had been fine until then, until they must have touched or opened something, and the bunker’s defences hadn’t liked that at all..

The lights had turned red, and the ominous drone of the alarms had started to build into a cacophony that even Cas found uncomfortable.

That was his first clue that something was wrong with his Grace, that the bunker was turning its safeguards inwards and going after anything not human.

Which included him.

He had been shoving the brothers to the door when a hefty stone panel, some kind of trap, had ejected itself from the wall as he passed, and knocked him to the floor, pinning him beneath its weight.

And it had hurt.

Even now, every breath Cas took (breaths he needed, he realised, and couldn’t quite quell the fear that came with that awareness) send a stabbing pain through him.

Sam seemed to know, and he grabbed a bottle of whiskey and some painkillers from one of the cabinets.

“These’ll help,” he said. “And you’re going to need them in a while, anyway.”

Cas gratefully took the pills and tried not to feel sick when he realised what Sam meant.

If his ribs were out of place, they would need to be manually set, until his Grace was freed by whatever dampening effect was in place thanks to the warding in the bunker.

Unless Dean could fix it, but when the older hunter returned he looked furious.

“No go,” he said. “Cas…”

Cas nodded. He was essentially human, and in need of emergency medical care, and it was his humans or the nearest hospital, a good two hours’ drive away.

He didn’t trust strangers.

He did trust his family.

“Do it,” he said.

++

Maybe fourteen years earlier, Dean and Bobby had been chasing down a wendigo way out in the woods, miles from anywhere.

They’d got the son of a bitch, but Bobby had been slammed into a tree, and there was no doubt he’d taken damage.

He was in too much pain to carry, and in no state to walk as was, and so he’d told Dean what he had to do.

It had been ugly, and Bobby had passed out as soon as he was done, but at least when he came too everything was aligned again, and he could walk (leaning heavily on Dean, and he meant _heavily_ ) back the miles to where they’d left his truck.

The feeling of the ribs clicking back into place still made Dean feel sick, and it was even worse knowing he was about to do that to Cas.

“You gotta hold still,” he told the angel.

Cas nodded, but Dean could see he didn’t know how bad this was going to get.

Dean exchanged a look with Sam and was grateful when his brother moved to stand behind the bed, and very gently took hold of Cas’s wrists, holding them level with the angel’s shoulders.

Cas trusted them, and didn’t resist, though the position had to hurt. But it gave Dean room to work and, since Cas was just as strong as them now, thanks to those fucking wards, it meant Sam could stop him reacting like most people would if somebody was pressing on their broken ribs.

Cas would try to push Dean away and sit up, and that would likely drive one or more of the ribs into something they couldn’t fix in the infirmary, and turn a serious situation into a life threatening one.

There was no point asking Cas if he was ready. Better to just do it.

So he did.

Cas’s shirt was open, pushed aside, leaving him with his undershirt covering his upper body.

Dean had left it on; Cas was going to be shaking cold when this was done so Dean wanted him to have something to help warm him until they could cover him up.

He slid his hand under the shirt, frowning an apology when Cas twitched.

“Your hands are cold,” he said.

Dean forced a grin. Yeah, that would be the least of Cas’s problems in a second.

He felt the line of the bottom rib, and then moved up. The lower two were intact, like Sam had said, but the next three…

That whole section was too raised, almost a mirror of Bobby’s injury all those years before, which Dean was extremely fucking grateful for then because it meant he knew just what to do.

He pressed in, light at first, trying to ignore the grunt of pain from their angel, and then a little harder, increasing the pressure until Cas did exactly what Dean suspected.

He tried to get away from the pain, an instinctive reaction for any living thing, human or angel.

Sam held on, murmuring apologies, and Dean tried to ignore how his heart seized up when Cas begged him to stop.

He didn’t dare answer, didn’t dare tell Cas he was sorry, that he had to keep going, because if he did, if he looked at the angel, if he let the fact he was _hurting_ Cas get inside him…

He’d have to stop, and Sam would have to take over, and that wasn’t fair to either of them.

To make Sam do this to Cas, especially when he hadn’t done it before.

To stop, and then drag it out further for Cas by starting all over again.

Dean blocked out the angel’s pain and kept going.

He finally felt the click as the ribs slotted back into place; he didn’t hear it because Cas gave a sharp cry and then sagged back.

Dean looked up, alarmed, thinking Cas had passed out (or worse) but he was still with them, looking a whole lot sicker than before, sweat beaded on his skin.

But he was awake and breathing and Sam very carefully let go of his wrists.

“Okay,” Dean said. He reached up to cup Cas’s jaw, while Sam stroked his hand through the angel’s hair. “Okay, Cas, you did good. Now you just need to rest, while we get those wards dimmed down. Sam, stay with him.”

Sam nodded, and grabbed a couple of heat patches from the medical kit before carefully applying them to Cas’s side, and then practically smothering the angel with blankets.

Dean knew Sam would watch him, make sure he didn’t go shocky, give him more pain relief if he needed it.

As for him…. He was going to fix those wards if he had to scrape them off the walls and start all over again.


End file.
